We can’t improve what we don’t measure. This is the number one reason why measuring your SEO success matters today. First off, if you’re working with an SEO company and they’re not delivering reports, then you’ve already lost. Keep reading to understand what we typically report to funeral homes who hire us to manage their SEO.
Funeral Home SEO involves optimizing your website and building links to climb up higher in search engine results, ultimately attracting more visitors to your site.
When assessing your performance, your main focus is on where you stand in search rankings. However, there are other key factors you should also monitor and evaluate. Lucky for you, we do all this for you as a client.
Reporting SEO Efforts – What Things You Should Track
Here are 7 metrics we suggest tracking to gauge your Funeral Home SEO performance:
1. Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) Position
One of the main things to watch for your Funeral Home’s SEO performance is where your website shows up in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant search terms. Each page typically displays 10 organic results, not including featured snippets, knowledge boxes, or ads. Your goal is to aim for a high position on the page.
In reports, higher positions are represented by lower numbers. For example, the top result on the first page is reported as position 1, while a result halfway down the page might be position 5.
You can track various aspects organic search positions, such as your overall average position, how your website ranks for specific keywords important to your brand, the position of branded versus un-branded keywords, and the distribution of your SERP rankings. The aim is to improve your rankings on the first and second pages of search results.
Google Search Console is a helpful free tool for monitoring your SEO performance. It tracks keyword positions over time. However, keep in mind that it only shows keyword positions at specific points in time. While you can use filters to narrow down the data, comparing groups of relevant keywords together will require manual work, such as downloading the data and organizing it in Excel or Google Sheets.
If you’re looking for a tool that automatically gathers a lot of keyword data, paid services like SEMRush, MOZ, and Ahrefs offer features that can save you time on data collection, allowing you to focus more on analyzing the results.
2. Impressions
Another important metric to keep an eye on is impressions. An impression is counted each time your Funeral Home’s website appears in search results for a user’s query. While many focus on achieving high positions in search rankings, it’s essential to remember that the ultimate goal is to increase visibility to potential clients.
Monitoring impressions can help you assess the effectiveness of the keywords you have google ads you’re targeting. After all, ranking on the first page for a keyword won’t benefit you much if it doesn’t lead to your website being seen by users.
If you have a first-page ranking but a low number of impressions, it suggests that the keyword may have a low search volume and might not be the keyword ranking is most valuable for your website.
Similarly, you can track metrics such as total impressions, impressions for specific groups of keywords, impressions for branded versus unbranded keywords, or impressions for terms relevant to your brand to understand your position in search results better.
Google Search Console provides an easy way to monitor impressions. However, if you’re only measuring impressions for specific keyword groups, you must collect this data manually.
3. Organic Search Traffic
Once your Funeral Home achieves a high position in search results and grabs the attention of users with an impression, the next step is to encourage them to click on your website. Organic search traffic is a key metric for tracking your SEO performance through clicks, users, or sessions.
You can measure various aspects of organic traffic, such as overall organic traffic, organic traffic from specific keyword sets, branded versus unbranded traffic, or organic traffic from relevant search queries.
Google Analytics is a popular tool for analyzing organic search traffic due to its advanced segmentation options, which allow for complex analysis. You can track organic traffic in Google Analytics by sessions or by users. However, it’s important to note that users must consent to your cookie policy for tracking in Google Analytics.
If cookie consent policies pose challenges in data collection, you can track organic search traffic through Clicks in Google Search Console. This tool extracts data from Google’s systems and search logs.
Depending on your website’s content management system (CMS), you may also have access to internal reports for tracking organic traffic, such as HubSpot’s Traffic Analytics. Make sure you research for a SEO report template for idea.
Additionally, comparing your organic search traffic to that of your competitors can provide valuable insights, although accessing their SEO analytics directly may not be possible. Third-party tools like SEM Rush and MOZ offer solutions for this. For example, SEM Rush’s Organic Research Tool lists competitors based on keyword rankings and common keywords shared between your own website traffic and theirs.
While organic traffic estimates provided by these SEO tools aren’t always 100% accurate, they offer a useful benchmark for understanding your performance relative to others in the industry.
4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-Through Rate (CTR) measures the percentage of people who clicked on your Funeral Home’s website after seeing it in search engine results pages (SERPs). These search engine results page will typically include your Title Tag and Meta Description for that page, which greatly influence whether a user clicks on your listing.
Monitoring CTR is important for understanding how appealing your website appears to users in search results. It also helps you evaluate the impact of any changes you make to your listings.
You can track various aspects of CTR as part of your SEO performance, such as the overall CTR of your website, the CTR of specific pages, or the CTR of certain terms, using Google Search Console.
5. Engagement Rate
Engagement rate measures the percentage of visitors who interact with your Funeral Home’s website by spending more than 10 seconds, clicking on links, or filling out forms. If you’re familiar with bounce rate, engagement rate is essentially its opposite.
The goal is to achieve a high engagement rate (ideally between 60% and 70%), as a low engagement rate indicates that visitors didn’t find the page relevant to their search and weren’t interested in exploring further.
A low engagement rate can have a negative impact on your position in search engine results pages (SERPs), making it a crucial metric for evaluating your SEO performance.
Like other SEO metrics, you can use engagement rate to assess SEO performance across your entire site, specific pages, or keywords. Google Analytics 4 offers various engagement rate SEO reports that you can customize and filter based on your goals.
6. Domain Authority
Domain authority is a numerical score that reflects the perceived trustworthiness and authority of a website’s domain in the eyes of search engines, particularly Google. It’s a metric often used by SEO professionals and tools like MOZ to assess the strength of a website’s backlink profile as well as its potential to rank well in search engine results.
The concept behind domain authority is that websites with a higher quantity and quality of inbound links from reputable sources referring to domains are likely to be more authoritative and trustworthy. Therefore, Google may prioritize these websites in its search results.
Tracking your Funeral Home’s domain authority over time allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your link-building content marketing and SEO efforts. By consistently building high-quality links from relevant and reputable websites, you can improve your domain authority, which may positively impact your search engine rankings.
It’s important to note that domain authority is just one of many factors that influence search engine rankings. However, it provides valuable insights into the overall strength and authority of your website’s domain in the competitive landscape of online and search engine optimization.
7. Technical Site Health
When it comes to maintaining a healthy online presence for your Funeral Home, understanding and addressing the technical aspects of your website is crucial. Technical site health refers to the overall condition of your website’s technical components, which directly impact its performance in search engine rankings.
Tools like SEM Rush offer site audit SEO reports that analyze various technical aspects of your website and assign it a technical site health score. This score is derived from factors such as the presence of missing Meta descriptions, broken links, duplicate title tags, and other technical SEO errors. Each of these issues can negatively affect your website’s visibility and usability, ultimately impacting its ranking in search results.
By regularly monitoring your technical site health score and addressing any identified issues, you can improve the overall SEO performance of your Funeral Home’s website. Fixing technical errors not only enhances the user experience but also signals to search engines that your site is well-maintained and trustworthy, potentially leading to higher rankings.
While technical site health is just one aspect of SEO performance measurement, it serves as a valuable indicator of your website’s overall health and readiness to compete effectively in the online landscape. Therefore, incorporating regular site audits and technical optimizations into your SEO strategy is essential for long-term SEO success.
If you’re unsure how to tackle technical SEO issues or need assistance in optimizing your website, our team is here to provide guidance and support tailored to the unique needs of your Funeral Home’s online presence. Feel free to reach out to us for expert assistance in achieving your SEO goals.
Conclusion: We Measure SEO Performance For You
SEO reporting is a must if you want to dominate the local seo results in your area. We report back valuable data, keyword trends, and more through our automated seo reports. Understanding your overall SEO health on a deep level is how you build a solid marketing strategy. Our reporting showcases how much traffic you’re getting, your search visibility, all the key metrics you must know to operate a successful funeral business today. Learn more about our SEO report and how it can help you grow your business today.